Editorials: Where I rant to the wall about politics. And sometimes the wall rants back.

A direct line to the Charlottesville riots… from 1938

Jerry Stratton, August 16, 2017

The correct response to the Charlottesville riots is to arrest the perpetrators, give them a fair trial, and put the guilty in jail.

It is the same as the correct response to the violent rioters in cities across the United States since last year’s election, and the violent rioters who “protest” when a speaker the left disagrees with is invited to speak at a college.

Police have literally been asked to stand down in some cases and let the rioters attack and destroy, as in Baltimore last year.

That we haven’t followed the correct response in those cases is why we have the Charlottesville riots.1 There is a direct line from the previous riots to this one. It runs from Seattle through Tucson, Dallas, and through every other violent left-wing fascist rally since the election last year. The direct line is the unwillingness of the authorities to arrest, charge, and imprison violent thugs rather than just make token statements and maybe arrest a handful.

Leftist “protestors” have been burning, stoning, beating people up, and even killing police officers for almost a year. The press hasn’t tied these rioters to the violent rhetoric of leftist politicians; they’ve gone out of their way to exonerate the actual rioters. So take it with a grain of salt that supposedly-right violence2 now has “a direct line to the president”.

I have often said that we shouldn’t have laws we aren’t willing to enforce; conversely, we should enforce the laws we have unless we are willing to repeal them. I can see no reason to repeal the laws against assault, arson, and murder.

When violent thugs see that they can get away with violence by coloring it as protest, it’s no surprise that you get more violent riots.

Remind me how this is anti-fascist behavior, again?

President Trump was completely right to denounce violence from both sides, because both sides were violent in Charlottesville, and one side has committed an outsized share of the violence for most of the year. We cannot stop violence like what happened in Charlottesville unless we take stopping violence seriously. The way to deal with the Charlottesville thugs, from both sides, is for the police to arrest those who break the law, and for the cities and counties where they broke the law to give them a fair trial and put the guilty in jail.

The longer we allow violence to continue without repercussions, the more violence we will get. Both the fascists of the antifa movement and of the white nationalist movement are a tiny minority in American politics today. But reward their violence with indifference—or, in the case of the antifa, praise from the press and politicians on the left—and they will grow. It’s time we stopped pretending that riots are protests, that criminals are not criminals. No matter what sides the rioters claim to support.

It’s not a strange world when people calling themselves anti-fascist burn books, beat up people they disagree with, and glorify killers. H. L. Mencken saw it as early as 1938—and in the context of Social Justice. There is very little new under the sun. Remember, it wasn’t the German government that burned books. It was German students, trying to silence voices that disagreed with them.

What makes this a strange world is that so many in the press and on the left let them have their fantasy.

Social Justice… will take us, soon or late, into the stormy waters of Fascism. To be sure, that Fascism is not likely to be identical with the kinds on tap in Germany, Italy and Russia; indeed, it is very apt to come in under the name of anti-Fascism. And its first Duce… will not call himself a dictator, but a scotcher of dictators. — H. L. Mencken (The Baltimore Sun, November 6, 1938)

In response to The Wisdom of Partisan: Throughout history, the people willing to split the baby have been the people who win. Can we break that thread?

Charlottesville, Virginia

“When Micah Johnson assassinated five police officers in Dallas last year, the Left was eager to evade the most obvious explanation: This was a terrorist act inspired by a hate movement called Black Lives Matter… Why is it that the appeal of ‘white supremacy’ is always irresistible to inferior white people?”

“Don’t play that game. What happened in Charlottesville isn’t us. It's just a small group of real bad people. Indict them, convict them, and lock them up for a long as possible. The rest of us should move on. We have a lot better things to do.”
(Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds at
Instapundit)

“If Spencer’s march was deliberately designed to provoke a riot, the ‘antifa’ college kids gave him what he wanted. So far, I’ve seen this downplayed in press coverage, but antifa came ready for fighting, too… The two sides are mirror images of each other, and both have an interest in making our politics devolve into street fighting.” (Memeorandum thread)

“What his critics want him to do is denounce white supremacist groups to the exclusion of anyone else. The problem with his statements, in the eyes of critics, is they are too even-handed. Trump’s denunciation includes both the white supremacists in Charlottesville and the fascist ‘antifas’ who counter-protested, as well as other hate groups.” (Memeorandum thread)
(Hat tip to Sarah Hoyt at
Instapundit)

Over more than a century, Democrats throughout the United States have sought to glorify the Confederacy, from the battle flag to erecting monuments to the political leaders of the Confederacy. They have killed to do it. Republicans should work to tear down those monuments to slavery.

“Sunday night, a local CBS Photojournalist was attacked by Antifa protesters. The photojournalist was standing on the sidelines of the protest filming with his iPhone when he was attacked. He was not on duty at the time.”

“Solidarity Against Hate counter-protesters waved communist flags, yelled ‘f*ck America,’ squirted police with silly-string, and burned the American flag… Thanks to Twitter and YouTube, Americans can see for themselves just how ‘peaceful’ the counter-protesters were.”
(Hat tip to Stephen Green at
Instapundit)

The Kobayashi Maru is that the media wants to be able to continue lying and be believed. People don’t distrust them because of Trump. People distrust them because they keep lying. It is a self-caused problem.

You know, the funny thing is, how lousy most of your lies are. You tell violent lies, you tell dirty lies, you tell scurrilous lies about conservative families. But most of your lies are not very good, are they? Funny that so many smart people can work so hard on lies, and spend all that money on them, and, what do you think it is? It must be the money. It turns everything to crap.

What’s old is new again: unwilling to learn the lessons of the past, those who wish to rule are returning to socialism and cronyism as the only two solutions for all the problems government creates. That is, more government to fix bad government.

Compiled shortly after the devastation of World War One, World Chancelleries is a plea for peace at any cost. It also sheds light on pre-Second World War viewpoints of progressive outlets like the Chicago Daily News.

The story of how the National Socialist German Workers Party and the fascist government takeover of businesses became defined as a conservative movement by socialists and leftists who believe the government should control businesses.

Lost?

They call him dictator. To the unpatriotic, to the anti-social and anti-civilized, to the lawless, to the bolshevists, he is dictator. To Italy—full of sterling human worth—to Italy, in my judgement, Mussolini is liberator. — Edward Price Bell (1925. “Italy’s Rebirth”)